As beautiful inside, as it is outside: On the connection between beauty and morality in the Old English corpus

Abstract

This paper aims to look into the link between the experience of beauty at a sensory level and its connection with more cognitive considerations in Anglo-Saxon England. To do so, I have carried out a complete analysis of the usage of the Old English adjective faeger, one of the main descriptors of beauty in the linguistic variety. Using the Dictionary of Old English Corpus, I have created a concordance and a database containing all its attested forms, which I have analysed following diverse sociolinguistic criteria. This analysis has proven that the evaluation of beauty as rendered by Old English faeger had a strong cognitive component, mainly related to the moral and spiritual virtues of the aesthetic object and often visually represented by an abundance of light. According to this analysis, the experience of beauty in Anglo-Saxon England constitutes a rare experience that in most cases, goes beyond the sensory and the purely physical.[es] Tan bello por fuera, como por dentro: Sobre la conexión entre la belleza y la moralidad en el corpus del inglés antiguo Resumen. El propósito de este artículo es investigar la relación entre la experiencia de la belleza a un nivel sensorial y su conexión con aspectos más cognitivos en la Inglaterra anglosajona. Para ello, he llevado a cabo un análisis completo del uso del adjetivo faeger perteneciente al inglés antiguo, uno de los principales descriptores de belleza en la variedad lingüística. Usando el Dictionary of Old English Corpus, he creado una concordancia y una base de datos con sus distintas atestaciones, las cuales he analizado siguiendo diversos criterios sociolingüísticos. Este análisis ha demostrado que la evaluación de la belleza tal y como es descrita por faeger tenía un fuerte componente cognitivo, principalmente relacionado con las virtudes morales y espirituales del objeto que a menudo son representadas visualmente con una abundancia de luz. De acuerdo con este análisis, la experiencia de la belleza en la Inglaterra anglosajona constituía una experiencia poco frecuente que, en la mayoría de casos, traspasaba las barreras de lo sensorial y lo puramente físico. Palabras clave: belleza, inglés antiguo, lingüística histórica, faeger, estética.

Wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world: The experience of wonder as a positive aesthetic emotion in Old English verse

“…Brewer (2016: 5) defines wonder as "a form of positive affect," while acknowledging that wonder has "'negative affect' cousins in fear, dread and horror, as well as awe and reverence, suggesting that it defies strict categorisation as a positive feeling." Indeed, these considerations are consistent with the description of mixed emotional phenomena by Menninghaus et al (2017;2019) or González et al (2017), for whom emotions that combine both positive and negative valence are experienced much more intensely.…”

“…It is not uncommon to find terms for wonder co-occurring alongside other Old English aesthetic emotion markers for the experience of beauty, as some of them have been described in Minaya (2019;2020or 2021. In these cases, appearance, brightness, clothes, ornaments, colours or even engravings are expressed as beautiful by means of the most common poetic terms to designate beauty or beautiful objects and entities, while the terms for wonder assume a secondary role in the aesthetic evaluation, rendering amazement as a result of the preceding aesthetic evaluation, as, for example, excerpts (1) and (2) emphasise:…”

Conceptual variation in the linguistic expression of aesthetic emotions: Cross-cultural perspectives on an underexplored domain (Variación conceptual en la expresión lingüística de emociones estéticas: perspectivas interculturales en un campo poco estudiado)

“…The domain LIGHT, to start with, is used by travellers in order to refer to the physical characteristics of the pyramids, described here as brilliant and surrounded by an aura. This connection between light and beauty is deeply rooted in the Western canon of beauty (Franzen, 2012;Minaya, 2019), and it can be furthermore connected with the Christian identification between God and 'the splendour of a sort of luminous current that permeates the entire universe' (Eco, 2004, p. 102). In contrast with this, as has been described above, Japanese travellers highlight the force emanated by the shadows of the pyramids: in this sense, a parallel can be established between the aesthetic role of the shadow projected by the pyramids and the relevance of the contrast between light and darkness and the appreciation of shadows that characterizes Japanese aesthetics 7 .…”

“…En principio, los viajeros utilizan el dominio LUZ para referirse a las características físicas de las pirámides, descritas aquí como brilliant brillantes y rodeadas por un aura 'aura'. Esta conexión entre luz y belleza está profundamente arraigada en el canon occidental de la belleza (Franzen, 2012;Minaya, 2019), y además puede ser conectada con la identificación cristiana entre Dios y 'el esplendor de una suerte de corriente luminosa que se infiltra en todo el universo' (Eco, 2004, p. 102). En contraste con lo anterior, como ya se ha descrito los viajeros japoneses destacan la fuerza emanada por las sombras de las pirámides: en este sentido, se puede establecer un paralelismo entre la función estética de la sombra proyectada por las pirámides y la importancia del contraste entre luz y oscuridad, y la apreciación de las sombras que caracterizan la estética japonesa 7 .…”